Wichita eagle., 1887-08-10
Col. Ochiltree and the Recorders.
PARIS AND BRUSSELS.
KING LEOPOLD TALKS BY TELE-
PHONE WITH PRESIDENT GREVY.

L
Extraordinary Impulse Given to Gam
bIine-Journalistic Enterprise.
On Feb. of the present year, date to be
remembered by historians, the telephone was
ready to work e1perimentally between the
Belgian and French capitals, and King Leo
pold determined upon having recourse to it tc
Interview President Grevy. He requested
the latter to have his ears open at the Elysee
at p. NJ, while his majesty himself would
go to the Brussels stock exchange, which is
the terminus of the international telephone
on the Belgian side. The appointment was
kept, and the advantage of the telephone
union Immediately became obvious. In the
first place, the meeting between the two
heads of state took place without any of the
fastidious pageantry which such occasions
impose upon unfortunate rulers when they
meet face to face. King Leopold dispensed
| with all kinds of retinue and state carriages
to go and confer with the French president;
indeed, he spoke in the undress uniform he
had been wearing at home all the morning;
and as to NJ Grevy. he is said to have been
clad in his dressing gown and slippers during
his talk with the king of the Belgians and
sovereign of the Congo free state. Besides,
there was none of the usual political fuss
about the business The interview having
been arranged only few minutes before
hand, thee had been no time for journalists
to horrify Europe by speculations about the
threatening alliance or the terrific wars
which would result from the tete tete; and
the emperors of Russia, Austria and Ger
many must have Immediately understood
how convenient it would be if they could
visit each other every year in the same man.
ner, instead of dragging all Europe's
| thoughts and fears with them to Kremsier
| or Skiernewicke. Furthermore, the CONVEX
| sation having gone on in a tone sufficiently
| loud to be overheard, any slight anxiety the
| meeting may have caused to the diplomatic
world was allayed within an hour, when it
became known that there had been no dark
scheming of king and president, and in fact
nothing more than such innocent talk as the
following:
"How is the weather on your side?' Grain
ing" "Oh! the suns out here" "What a
fine thing the telephone isI7 Certainly: I
hear your majesty perfectly we'll" "And l
catch the sound of a fly buzzing around your
excellency's ears"
The beginning which the Paris Brussels tele-
phone made, when it was opened to the public,
twenty-three days later, caused many super
stitious folks to turn pale. For, strange to
say, the first communication which the wires
conveyed was the news of q terrible calamity;
the earthquake in the south of France and
the Riviera, by which SO many thousands of
houses were wrecked and so many hundreds
of lives lost However, outsiders only looked
upon the circumstance as omnous The
greater number of people using the interna-
tional telephone. SO far, are stockholders and
journalists, a set of practical persons whose
minds are generally pretty free from super
stition, and who are too busy to be given to
disagreeable broodings So the telephone has
escaped the fate of those messengers who.
when they bore evil news to the eastern
potentates, had their unlucky heads chopped
off for the trouble they gave. Far from
suffering any punishment, the Franco Belgian
telephone is increasing its popularity every
day, in Belgium at least
One of its first effects has been to give an
extraordinary impulse to gambling on the
stock exchange. OF course, our quotations
have at all times been swayed to great ex-
tent by the prices Of the Paris bourse. Now
that the telephone records the fuctuation of
the French funds every minute, you may
conceive the advantage which all stock
brokers and tankers availing themselves of
this means of communication, are able to
secure in their dealings. 1t is just as though
a certain number of betting men in New
York were kept posted every half second as
TO the movements Of the competitors for the
EPSON Derby while the Derby was being
run Brussels gamblers now follow the QUO
tation race on the Paris bourse yard per yard,
inch per inch. One after another come and
closet themselves in the tiny Enclosure where
the telephone apparatus is secluded within
wadded walls, between which the sound and
the person catching it are equally stif1ed, for
the whole of the cabin, including the stool to
sit upon, and the desk to lean and write upon,
covers less than square yard of space. In a
few minutes purple, perspi ing faces and
hasty feet emerge from the closet, the owners
of said faces and feet holding at their pencils
end bit of yet unpublished news, which may
mean thousands of dollars won or lost within
the next minute or two.
On a journalistic enterprise this interna-
tonal telephone exercises perhaps a greater
influence still. In order to grasp the facts,
we must first bear in mind that competition
of all kinds, financial, commercial or literary,
is invariably much keener in small places
than in large ones. In his description of an
election day at. Eatanswill, Charles Dickens
shows that political feeling ran very much
higher in that nutshell of a town than III huge
London. So it may be said that the race for
money, for success, for news, is very much
livelier in Brussels than in London or Paris.
The promptneSs with which the Belgian CAPT.
tai awaited itself of the inland telephone is a
case in point. At the present hour the num-
Der of persons using the telephone in Paris is
above 5000; it is the same in London and
1900 in Brussels. OF course, these figures
will appear ridiculously small in such prog
ress hunting part of the world as America.
have rad somewhere of there being $50, 900
telephones at work. Throughout the United
States, and that the citizens of Guayauuil,
Ecuador, have completed their telephone
communications before thinking of paving
their streets. But then we are not concerned
at present with the New World our compare
son is between the countries of the Old
World, and it shows Belgium to be more en-
any of its great neighbors.
AS the above figures show, the proportion
of people employing the telephone in London
is hardly one out of 700; in Paris one out Of
every 500, and in Brussels, where the tele-
phone should be very much less requisite, see
ing that the distances are greatly shorter, it
is one out of every 200 Indeed, the Belgians
have been in such hot haste to enjoy the
fruits of Edison's invention that they have
not wasted time, as other countries have, in
continuing telephone of their own; they
adapted EdiSon's to their wants just as it was,
80 much 50 in fact that the Edison company,
established in London, is at this very moment
prosecuting the Belgian one for counterfeit